MAA over the past several years has shown they now only care about their shareholders and what they can do to make more money. There are a few examples of this.
1. The first one is that they eliminated an annual bonus in 2019 without telling their employees, when pressed on this by several employees in my region the HR department said they thought they notified us, but they must have forgotten.
2. Renewal increases have gone up drastically. Gone are the days of getting a reasonable increase 3-4%, maybe 6-7% if you were in a very robust market. Instead they are trying to push 10% or more renewal increases and letting managers know that they should just tell the residents who complain to try and find a better deal elsewhere. I personally wouldn't be able to afford a 10% renewal increase as my annual raise was only 3%. They've begun to get this attitude of we are the biggest guys in town and people will do what we want. That strategy hasn't worked well in places like Dallas or Denver, two different markets that have struggled to maintain occupancy as residents look for a property with more reasonable expectations.
3. Their response to the corona virus has essentially been to tell residents they are still to pay their rent on time and if they are late due to work circumstances changing they will still adhere to their payment policies and process evictions as necessary. They don't care about their residents and how they might be impacted, only if they will get to collect their rent check or not.
4. If you plan to move up with MAA, there is no career support for your goals. They prefer for you not to get your CAM , NALP, or even CAMT certifications. If you want to get promoted, their expectation is for you to drop everything and do what they ask of you and if you say no then your chance for promotion is essentially zero, and since they don't want you getting certifications it makes it harder to look for jobs elsewhere.
5. The pay scale is not great whatsoever and their benefits don't make up for that. Their refusal to pay market pay has led to an increased shortage of employees. Some regions have seen such high employee turnover that employees leave before even finishing their 30 day training.
6. HR is not their to protect you, they are their solely to protect MAA. This is probably a given at majority of companies, but be aware that if you go to HR they will believe you are the problem. I've seen several employees get terminated after reporting their concerns to HR when they felt their direct manager wasn't assisting them. They were told each time that they felt it was best to part ways and that a new direction was needed.
7. RVP's, you either love them or hate them. Their isn't a middle ground. Some of this isn't the RVP's faults as they being given direction from Corporate on increasing rents, making more money, reducing expenses, etc. but because of this RVP's then tend to take it out on their Property Managers which is unfortunate.
8. Increasingly those working at the Corporate Office have continued to disregard what their property managers are telling them. Pricing Calls were supposed to be a conversation about what your concerns are, and have now instead turned into your Pricing Analyst (somebody who has never worked at a property) telling you what you need to be doing to rent apartments. Fees have been changed without consulting Property Managers and seeing what their thoughts are on how it will impact the business.
